Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin then Ph.D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.

In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabet’s leading subsidiary, will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, who became CEO of Alphabet.

Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets and Slides), email (Gmail/Inbox), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), social networking (Google+), instant messaging and video chat (Google Allo/Duo/Hangouts), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and turn-by-turn navigation (Google Maps), video sharing (YouTube), notetaking (Google Keep), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and in October 2016, it launched multiple hardware products (the Google Pixel smartphone, Home, Wifi, and Daydream View). The new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated: “a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience”.

Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet network operator. In February 2010, it announced Google Fiber, a fiber-optic infrastructure that was installed in Kansas City; in April 2015, it launched Project Fi, combining Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different providers in an effort to create a seamless and fast wireless Internet experience; and in 2016, the company launched the Google Station initiative to make public “high-quality, secure, easily accessible Wi-Fi” around the world, which had already been deployed in India.

An August 2011 report estimated that Google had almost one million servers in data centers around the world. It processed over one billion search requests per day in 2009, and about 20 petabytes of data each day in 2008.

Alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google.com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube and Blogger. Google has been the second most valuable brand in the world for 4 consecutive years, and was valued in 2016 at $133 billion.

Google’s mission statement, from the outset, was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and its unofficial slogan was “Don’t be evil”. In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase: “Do the right thing”.

Google’s commitment to such robust idealism has been increasingly called into doubt due to a number of the firm’s actions and behaviours which appear to contradict this.

List of mergers and acquisitions by Google (Alphabet)

Alphabet has acquired over 200 companies, with its largest acquisition being the purchase of Motorola Mobility, a mobile device manufacturing company, for $12.5 billion.

Since its IPO 10 years ago, Google has spent at least $23 billion buying 145 companies, according to FactSet. Of all those deals, financial analysts say three stand out as clear winners.

The first is YouTube, which Google bought in 2006 for $1.65 billion. The price tag seemed high at the time, but YouTube has grown by leaps and bounds. The digital marketing firm eMarketer says YouTube raked in $5.6 billion in gross revenue last year alone.

Another success is Android. Andy Rubin sold his company to Google in 2005, and then helped develop the mobile operating system into the global powerhouse it is today. The operating system will run on 80 percent of the smartphones sold this year, according to IDC.

“Google doesn’t make any money on the operating system itself,” said Neil Doshi of CRT Capital. “But, because it’s tied to Google properties and services, they can really monetize well from Google searches and Gmail and all the other Google applications that come along with that.”

A final winner analysts highlight is DoubleClick, which expanded Google’s reach in online advertising into display ads. Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2007.

Three acquisitions that didn’t work out: ITA Software, dMarc Broadcasting and Slide, a social app developer that Google shut down two years after buying the company for $182 million.

Finally, there is the mixed bag of Motorola, which Google bought for more than $12 billion, and then sold for $3 billion two years later. However, Youssef Squali of Cantor Fitzgerald says Google did keep most of Motorola’s portfolio of mobile patents, offering the company legal protection for its Android software.

Now the question for investors is what Google will buy next with its $61 billion cash pile. Analysts say the company could make a play in the social space given the underwhelming performance of Google Plus.